The Priestess in the Greco-Roman World

by Edward R Hardy

from Why Not?Priesthood and the Ministry of
Women

The word sacerdos in Latin is epicene, whereas the Greek
tspsoi; is capable of a feminine form, iepsia. In either language the
Greco-Roman world was acquainted with female as well as male sacred personages,
though these would not in every case be priests in the sense of offerers of
sacrifices. The most conspicuous were the Vestal Virgins at Rome, who as
guardians of the sacred fire probably represented the king's daughters who had
tended the hearth in the days when the king of Rome was the chief of a
primitive clan by the Tiber. Selected between the age of six and ten for thirty
years service, after which they could leave and marry (but often did not), they
lived in dignity in the Atrium Vestae of which the remains may still be seen in
the Forum. The fire in Vesta's shrine was annually rekindled by a priest on the
first of March, the old Roman New Year's Day; during the festival of Vesta in
June the sacred store-room was open to the visits of matrons, and at its climax
the year's ashes were removed. The Vestals took part in various traditional
festivals, most of which seem originally to have an agricultural character,
though why on May 15th the Pontifex Maximus and the wife of the Flamen Dialis
joined them in a procession of which the climax was throwing straw effigies
into the Tiber was as great a mystery to the Romans of the Empire as it is to
us. As sacrosanct figures the Vestals were guardians of wills, and were
credited even by the sceptical with special powers of intercession 
redimunt vitam populi procrumque salutem is a Christian poet's
description of the pagan belief. (1) Besides a considerable endowment, their
privileges included the right to use wheeled vehicles within the City, and
special seats at the gladiatorial games, which other women would watch only
from the back rows. To us this seems a strange form of entertainment for
virgins (as it did to Prudentius in the fourth century), but the reason behind
it may be the original sacred character of the games as a sacrifice of
captives. The Vestals were not admitted to athletic contests until Nero
discovered that this privilege was allowed to their approximate Greek
counterpart, the priestess of Demeter at Olympia, who sat on the altar during
the Olympic games. (2)

The Atrium Vestae was adorned with statues of honoured
members of the community. A typical inscription says of a mid-third century
Chief Vestal (Virgo Vestalis maxima) that the state felt daily the
effects of her chastity (disciplina) and exactitude in fulfilling the sacred
rites.(3) The virginity of the Vestals seems to have been valued more as a
means of preserving their semi-magical potency as daughters of the State than
as a form of ascetic devotion. When Domitian revived the half-forgotten penalty
of burial alive for the 'incest' of a Vestal, (4) the Roman world was startled
but not apparently shocked. The episode is suggestive of Thomas Cromwell's
career as an enforcer of monastic discipline, but it may reflect the
superstition rather than the wickedness of the Emperor. Perhaps as much may be
said for the execution of Vestals under Caracalla, though one cannot take very
seriously the claim of Elagabalus that he was justified in marrying a Vestal
since as a priest he could properly marry a priestess.(5) Besides the Roman
Vestals there were similar colleges in other Italian towns. It was for a Vestal
of Alba and her lover that, probably in the 370's, Symmachus, the pagan leader
of the Roman Senate, petitioned for the establishment of a proper tribunal,
though he can scarcely have secured this in the days of Christian Emperors.(6)
The Roman college seems to have been respectable enough in its later days, in
which it enters briefly into comparison with the virgins of the Church. After
the disendowment of Roman paganism by Gratian in 382, Symmachus pleaded for the
Vestals as well as for the other pagan institutions in his petition for the
restoration of the altar of Victory addressed to Valentinian II in 384. Ambrose
and Prudentius rather ungenerously replied that the pagans could only support
six or seven virgins (the extra one presumably a novice) at great expense while
the Church easily produced hundreds.(7) The only obvious point of similarity
would seem to be that virgins and widows were expected to maintain the Church
by their prayers.(8) Losing apparently some of its members to the Church, the
College of Vestals survived disendowment until the final suppression of public
paganism at Rome by Theodosius in 394.(9)

Greece and Egypt

Rome itself does not seem to have had any other fulltime
priestesses, although women did offer sacrifice at the strictly female
mysteries of the Good Goddess, celebrated in the house of one of the
magistrates in December. The wife of the priest of Jupiter, flamen dialis, was
flaminica dialis, and like her husband subject to various obscure taboos. She
appeared at some of the festivals celebrated by the Vestals, but was not
considered a priestess of Juno as some have supposed. In Greece matters were
somewhat different, since it seemed natural to the Greek mind that a goddess
should be served by a priestess. There was some hesitation on the matter,
however. A collection of evidence on the subject assembles references to 171
priestesses and 177 priests of various goddesses (while priestesses of gods
were very rare, though not entirely unknown).(10) The status of the Greek
priestess, like that of the Greek priest, varied. She might be an attendant at
the temple, she might be a member of a distinguished family taking part in a
civic festival, she might be a child or young woman in a semi-dramatic role. A
few examples may serve to illustrate. At Eleusis the priestess of Demeter
formally presided at the shrine, although the hierophant who conducted the
initiation into the mysteries was more conspicuous. At Delphi the roles were
reversed, since the priest of Apollo was the chief figure, but the Pythia (of
whom more later) was the voice of the oracle. At Corinth Poseidon was served by
a maiden priestess until she was ready for marriage; while in the country at
Orchomenus the shrine of Artemis had been attended by a virgin until sad
experience indicated that a widow would be safer.(11) At Sparta the young
maidens who served the shrine of the Leucippides, daughters of Apollo, were
also called Leucippides; at Patrae the virgin selected annually as priestess of
Artemis rode behind deer in the procession, and there was a similar
impersonation at Tegea.(12) And a rash soul who attempted violent entry into
the Acropolis at Athens might be met by the priestess of Athena Polias on her
throne, apparently as living representative of the goddess.(13)

Besides the traditional cult priestesses one must note
the honorific priesthoods of ruler-cults; the deified females of the Ptolemaic
house received honorary priestesses at Alexandria and Ptolemais,(14) and the
custom was carried to the Roman world with the deification of Augustus' wife
Livia, followed by several imperial ladies of the second century.(15) These
offices seem to have been civic distinctions, secured by leading citizens for
their debutante daughters, and involved no more serious sacerdotal functions
than those of the young ladies carrying baskets who appear in the Parthenon
sculptures. The importance of the mysteries devoted to a female deity, the
Great Mother and Isis, might have led one to expect a similar importance of
women in their cult, but this does not seem to have followed. In Egypt women
are found in the lower ranks of the priesthood, the Levites of the Egyptian
temples as it were, as singers and dancers  a conspicuous case is that of
the twins Thaues and Taus, attached to the Serapeum at Memphis with the duties
of pouring libations for the dead and wailing for Apis, who figured in legal
proceedings in the second century BC.16 But the bride of Amon whom Herodotus
had heard of at Thebes belonged to the past, and it was centuries before that
the later Pharaohs had replaced the highpriest of Amon by a succession of
princesses as Divine Votaresses, which seems to have been a means of keeping
under their control a dangerous centre of power which in previous ages had
threatened the throne. (17) After all, the cult of Isis was ultimately derived
from that of Osiris, and if women were prominent among her worshippers,
descriptions, pictures, and documents show her as mainly served by men. There
are a few exceptions, such as the female 'interpreter of dreams' who appears at
Athens; and several monuments show women in the costume of the goddess carrying
her sistrum and rattle. (18) These are probably to be interpreted as
patronesses of the cult who were given an honorific position. If they have a
parallel in the Church it is to be found in the honourable women for whom a
place of distinction was found in the congregation, and who are sometimes
called xxxxxxx or xxxxxxxxfrom the Phoebe of Romans 16, whom I would put
in this category, to the wealthy deaconess Olympias who was one of St.
Chrysostom's friends and supporters at Constantinople.(19)

In areas under oriental influence more startling
phenomena appear, when the awe inspired by the life-force takes surprising and
sometimes disgusting forms. Sacred prostitution existed in Western Asia in
ancient times, as in modern India, and was naturally as repulsive to Christians
as to Jews in the period with which we are concerned. I suspect, however, that
ancient and modern writers have sometimes seen the institution on slight
evidence; it is certainly frequently referred to as something practised far
away or long ago.(20) Herodotus may have been well-informed when he tells us
that at Babylon and in Cyprus women thought it proper to lose their virginity
in a temple, and Strabo when he reports the same practice at a shrine of
Anaitis in Armenia, (21) but one wonders a bit. However, Lucian reports from
his own time that women at Byblos who refused to mourn for Adonis were obliged
to give themselves to strangers;(22) and similar customs seem to have survived
at Heliopolis (Baalbek) until suppressed by Constantine, although Athanasius
refers to sacred prostitution in Phoenicia as a thing of the past. (23) Back in
the first century, Strabo doubtless knew the habits of the sacred women of the
god Ma at Comana in Pontus near his homeland, to whom he compares the hetaerae
of Corinth, sacred to Aphrodite.(24) But he is here referring to old Corinth,
destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC, and not to the new Roman colony of his own
time. It does not seem that the Corinth of St. Paul and the Rome of St. Peter
needed any such cover for their licentiousness; when Juvenal observes in
passing 'in front of what temple won't you find a woman?' (nam quo non
prostat femina templo (25) he is, I think, referring to the temples of Rome
as places of public resort.

Response to inspiration

Closer to possible Christian experience are the women who
responded to some form of divine inspiration. In the procession described by
Apuleius the female devotees of Isis at Corinth seem to be dignified ladies
with perfumed hair and veils. But with references to the Bacchae of the same
city Pausanias cautiously observes 'they say the women are sacred and maddened
by Dionysus'.(26( As a modern writer puts it, the Bacchae were not priestesses
but 'worshippers who stood in a very close relation to the god'. We are not far
away in time, place, or phenomenon from the more disorderly aspects of the life
of the early Corinthian church. And not far away was the Pythia of Delphi who,
in the words of the learned lady just quoted, 'owed her position to the
excitable temperament of womanhood' as well as to the water of the sacred
spring.(27) Lucian satirically invites us to sympathise with the hard-worked
Apollo who had to rush from oracle to oracle 'at the beck of every priestess
who has taken her draught of holy water, munched the laurel-leaf, and made the
tripod rock', and casually refers to the maddened women to be found with the
throng of priests and assistants at the great temple of Hierapolis. (28) More
respectfully, Strabo speaks of the GeoepepriTOi, those carried away by
divinity, at the Cappadocian shrines  we are not very far here from
Ignatius of Antioch who was also 0EOcpopoq  and mentions that at
Castabala the priestesses of 'Perasian Artemis' walked barefoot over coals,
(29) a performance to which there are of course modern parallels in various
parts of the world. From this Anatolian world have arisen both Christian and
Moslem representatives of the 'enthusiasm' which the eighteenth century so much
deplored, and in which women have had their part. One thinks of the
prophetesses who were supporters, almost colleagues, of the Phrygian heresiarch
Montanus, and of the nameless third century woman, the Joanna Southcott or
Aimee Semple Macpherson of her time, who claimed by prophetic authority to
organise her own sect in which she professed to administer the rites of the
Church, including both Baptism and the Eucharist. We know of her because in
writing to Cyprian Bishop Firmilian of Caesarea quoted this as an instance of
heretical baptism which could not possibly be valid.(30) Probably from the same
area came the Marcosian Gnostic who according to Irenaeus imposed on the silly
women of Gaul by the impressive ceremonies in which he invited some of them to
bless lesser cups, and then himself made the eucharistic cup turn pink,
presumably by the addition of some chemical.(31)

Early Christians

If we ask why the early Church did not invite women to
preside at the Eucharist, the most definitely priestly act of the Christian
ministry, the answer undoubtedly is that for a number of reasons the idea never
occurred to it. Ceremonially the emcKonoq at the Eucharist succeeds to the
Jewish paterfamilias saying grace; and spiritually to the Jewish priest
presenting offerings to the Lord in a religion which did not know priestesses,
though it did recognise that prophetic inspiration could come to either sex.
Such formal discussion as we find in ancient Christian writers seems to revolve
around the question whether a woman might conceivably administer Baptism,
probably because they were used to solemn baptisms celebrated by the Bishop and
his attending presbyters, with deacons and (in some places at least)
deaconesses assisting in the actual undressing and immersion of the candidates.
Tertullian suggests that if heresy were unrestrained, it might lead to women's
venturing to exorcise and baptise;(32) Firmilian tells us that this actually
occurred, as noted, and Epiphanius of Salamis includes in his magnificent
catalogue of heresies a branch of the Montanists who had female presbyters and
bishops.(33) In the mid-third century the author of the Didascalia
Apostolorum argues that the duty of widows was to pray, not to teach or
baptise; and a century later the editor of the Apostolic Constitutions
enlarges this passage with the note that while women might visit the sick and
lay hands on them, the Church did not have priestesses, unlike the Gentiles
with their female deities.(34) Finally, in the late fourth century Epiphanius
takes up the ministry of women when at the end of his collection of heresies he
comes to the Collyridians, a sect of Thracian origin whose women had the
curious custom of offering cakes to the Virgin Mary. Besides pointing out that
Mary is venerated but not worshipped, he observes that neither under the old
covenant or the new was the priestly office given to women, although the
possibility of a female prophet was guaranteed by the case of the four
daughters of Philip the Evangelist (Acts 21: 9). Surely no one in the Church
was more deserving of honour than Mary, yet it was the Apostles who first
celebrated the Eucharist and John the Baptist who baptised her Son. In his own
time the Church used the ministry of deaconesses, primarily he thinks for
attendance on female candidates at Baptism, but if it did call some women
TcpeapimSec; this is an honorary rank and does not make them female presbyters
or priestesses.(35) And what Epiphanius stated remained the general attitude of
the Church.

Notes

1 Prudentius, Contra Symmachum ii. 1104; on the
Vestals see J. P. V. Balsdon, Roman Women, 1962, pp. 235-242; W. Warde
Fowler, The Roman Festivals of the Period of the Republic, 1899, s.v.;
Thomas Cato Worsfold, The History of the Vestal Virgins of Rome, a
scrappy but useful collection of information.